HEATHER BURRELL

Steinweiss

Steinweiss at his home studio in 1999. “For the Record” 204.

Text from:“For the Record: the Life and Work of Alex Steinweiss” by Jennifer McKnight-Trontz and Alex Steinweiss. New York: Princeton Architectural, 2000. Print.

Steinweiss at his home studio in 1999. “For the Record” 204.

Alex Steinweiss invented the cover art for 78-rpm record

albums. Without him this miniposter might eventually have

come to pass, but when? As early as 1939, when Steinweiss

cut it out of whole Kraft paper? A year later? Five? Ten? Of

course, speculating about what might have been is futile:

Steinweiss was the first. He recognized a need and invented a

genre that was as revolutionary in its way as sound was to film

and color was to television. It added an entirely new dimension

to the musical experience–and, not incidentally, the sale of

recorded music. Being first had its advantages, too, because all

competitors were judged against his standard, and in the begin-

ning few stood up. Eventuallly, though, the genre grew more

stylistically diverse and today record album design is one of the

most creative design disciplines.

Steinweiss produced hundreds of graphic covers, but did not

rest on this invention. In the late 1940s a new chapter in the

history of recorded music began when Columbia Records

announced the first long-playing record, and Steinweiss

developed the paperboard container, which served as an

archetype until the introduction of the compact disc in 1989.

Introduction. Steven Heller. “For the Record.”

The Candid Microphone, Allen Funt, Columbia Records, 1950.

Ravel: Shéhérazade, conducted by Leonard Bernstein, Columbia Records, 1950.

Columbia Presents Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue, conducted by

André Kostelanetz, Columbia Records, 1941.

Louis and Earl, Louis Armstrong and Earl Hines, Columbia Records, 1940.

Offenback: Gaité Parisienne, conducted by Efrem Kurtz, Columbia Records, 1946.

The Candid Microphone, Allen Funt, Columbia Records, 1950.

Steinweiss stumbled into an industry that had no graphic

tradition. Sheet music coversfrom the late ninteenth and

early- to mid-twentieth centuries were beautifully illus-

trated, but early record albums were noticeably berefit.

When Steinweiss was hired as the art director for Columbia

Records in late 1939. It was simply to design its advertis-

ing. In those days, shellac 78-rmp records were packaged in

bulky albums of three or four records each in separate Kraft

paper sleeves bound between pasteboard covers. They were

differentiated only by colored bindings embossed with gold-

or silver-leaf titles. Back then, dedicated record shops were

rare, so albums were often sold in appliance stores close to

the record players. The principle promotion device was the

cardboard point-of-purchase advertisement. RCA/Victor and

Decca had made a half-hearted attempt to use reproduc-

tions of famous paintings on their covers. Otherwise the

record album was a tabula rasa.

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For Columbia Records, Steinweiss created scores of ads,

posters, booklets, and catalogs for for the classical, pop,

and international lines. But he wasn’t just mindlessly churn-

ing out designs: “I put some style into it,” he said, explain-

ing the difference between his covers and those of the

other record companies.

After a few months, Steinweiss had what amounted to an

epiphany: He thought that the way Columbia was selling

their records was ridiculous. The generic plain paper wrap-

pers were unattractive and lacked any appeal. Steinweiss

announced to his boss that he wanted to experiment by de-

signing a few covers with original art. Despite the fact that

manufacturing costs would increase, he got the go-ahead.

The very first album was for a Rodgers and Hart collection.

Others followed and sales dramatically increased on the

albums with the Steinweiss designed covers. Original cover

art had passed the test.

Stravinsky: Firebird Suite, Chant du Rossignol, conducted

by Lorin Maazel, Decca Records, 1954

Steinweiss was influenced by 1930s French and German

posters’ flat color fields and bold graphics. Rather than

show a portrait of a recording artist, he used musical

cultural symbols to stimulate the audience’s interest. “I

tried to get into the subject,” he explained, “either through

the music or the life and times of the artist/composer. For

example, with a Béla Bartók piano piano concerto I took the

elements of the piano – the hammers, keys, strings – and

composed them in a contemporary setting using appropri-

ate color and rendering. Since Bartók was Hungarian, I also

put in the suggestion of a peasant figure.” For a recording

of conga music by Desi Arnaz he abstracted an enlarged

pair of hands playing a stylized conga drum. For George

Gershwin’s original pressing of Rhapsody in Blue he places

a piano on a dark blue field illuminated only by the golden

glow of a street light. The mood was sublime.

Hands Off the Americas, poster for Museum of Modern Art competition, 1942.Buy Share in America, poster for U.S. Treasury Department competition, 1941.

Advance Through Training, poster for U.S. Navy, 1944

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As Steinweiss’s visual lexicon grew, his album art became

more abstract. For Bartók’s Music for Stings, Percussion and

Celesta, realism is eschewed in favor of a photgram of

dancing colored shapes and a piece of yarn. Likewise, for

Claude Debussy’s Preludes Book II, he playfully overlays

brush and line sketches of nudes, leaves, and birds on a

watercolor that hints at the movement of clouds. As he ma-

tured, Steinweiss reveled in the fact that music stimulates

the visual imagination far beyond the more conventional

iconography with which he began his career.

Steinweiss’s covers maximized the limited image area of the

cover by using poster elements – a strong central

image, bold type and letting, and distinctive color. Some of

his designs were icons, such as Songs of Free Men by Paul

Robeson; a chained hand grasping a knife that he sued as

a symbol of heroism. Similarly, the gigantic black and white

hands on Boogie Woogie symbolized equality in an era when

racial segregation was commonplace.

The limitations of working at Columbia’s headquarters in

Bridgeport, Connecticut affected Steinweiss’s design as

much as any formal or stylistic influence: the local

photoengravers did not work in color: “They didn’t know

what to do with color,” says Steinweiss. “If you wanted color,

you had to give them tight keyline drawings, and they would

break these down into the specified colors. Everything was

printed as a solid. When they made color proofs they didn’t

even know how to remove the guidelines. I had to teach

them to do it all.”

Advance Through Training, poster for U.S. Navy, 1944

Light Up A Camel, billboard design for portfolio, 1939

See Your Doctor, poster for the New York City Departm

ent of Health, 1937.

Exotic Music, conducted by André Kostelanetz,

Columbia Records, 1940.

Debussy: La Mer, conducted by Arthur Rodzinski, Columbia Records, 1946.

Beethoven: Fifth Symphony, Schubert “Unfinished,” con-

ducted by Leopold Stokowski, London Records, 1970.

Beethoven: Fifth Symphony, Schubert “Unfinished,”

conducted by Leopold Stokowski, London Records, 1970.

Temperamental recording artists were much less trouble.

Indeed, many jazz greats and classical maestros gratefully

appreciated Steinweiss’s efforts at increasing their record

sales. Leopold Stokowski, for one, wouldn’t have anyone

else design his covers. And Steinweiss also received letters

from artists like Eddy Duchin and Rise Stevens who praised

him for visually interpreting their work so effectively.

During World War I Steinweiss left Columbia Records to

design cautionary displays and posters for the U.S. Navy

Training Aids Development Center in New York City.

After the war he decided to continue as a freelancer and

was put on retainer as a consultant to the president of

Columbia Records. In 1948 Steinweiss was asked to

develop the LP jacket.

Designing the jacket was the easy part, Steinweiss recalled.

The hard part was finding a manufacturer willing to invest

around $250,000 (a tremendous sum in those days)

in new equipment. To facilitate matters he enlisted his

brother-in-law to locate a manufacturer, which he did.

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Dance La Conga with Desi Arnaz and His La

Conga Orchestra, Columbia Records, 1940.

Moody Woody, Woody Herman and His Orches-

tra with Charlie Byrd, Everest Records, 1959.

One Plus 1= II?, Milt Gabler from Two Ideas by

John Benson Brooks, Decca Records, 1958.

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194

7. The LP package, a thin board covered with printed paper, soon

became the standard for the industry. In the beginning it was

designed to hold shellac and vinyl records but shellac was soon

eliminated entirely. Steinweiss’s invention was effective protec-

tion for LPs, but it also allowed more artistic variety, which for

its inventor became a mixed blessing. Advancements in printing

invited more studio and conceptual photography, which quickly

overtook the illustrative style. Live models were used for

dramatic mood portraits and clever setups.

Though Steinweiss preferred his more personal illustrative and

typographic approaches, he art-directed and designed photo

shoots for London and Decca records. He also worked for most

of the major labels during that period, and sometimes changes

his style and used a pseudonym so that his work would not be

confused with the distinctive character that he gave to

Columbia. But by the late fifties the business was in flux. The

pop labels wanted to switch almost entirely over to photography.

Other changes occurred that had adverse effects on Steinweiss’s

practice. At Columbia, Ted Wallerstein clashed over policy

with William Paley, who bought out Wallerstein’s contract.

This left Steinweiss without a patron and his fate in the hands

of a new president, Goddard Lieberson, the former head of

Columbia’s classical A&R (Artists and Repertoire) division.

Though Lieberson and Steinweiss had a cordial working relation-

ship, it quickly soured after Lieberson became president. Neil

Fujita was hired as art director and decided to bring most of the

design work in house. With the writing on the wall, at

the age of fifty-five, Steinweiss reluctantly decided to bow

out of the record business.

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Print magazine cover, 1947.

A-D magazine cover, 1941.

Idea magazine cover, 1970.

Steinweiss had launched a brand new field and practiced

what he preached for more than thirty years. His album

covers defined music for a generation, maybe more. Today

Steinweiss’s record covers – miniposters that continue to

draw the eye – must be judged for how they revolutionized

music packaging, as well as how they influenced styles

and fashions during the music industry’s adolescence.

Holiday magazine cover, 1960.

Tchaikovsky Concerto in D Major, David Oistrakh on Violin, Decca Records, 1967.

Cole Porter Songs, conducted by André Kostelanetz, Columbia Records, 1948.

Beethoven: Quintet in E Major, Budapest String Quartet, Columbia Records, 1942.

Enesco: Roumanian Rhapsody no.1, conducted by Frederick Stock, Columba Records, 1943.

Gershwin in Brass, Everest Records, 1959.

Bing Crosby, Decca Records, 1954.

Kachaturian, Piano Concerto, Peter Katin on Piano, conducted by Hugo Rignold, Everest Records, 1960.

Frankie Carle Encores, Columbia Records, 1943.

Granados: Danzas Espáñolas, Alicia de Larrocha on Piano, Decca Records, 1958.

Back Cover: Smash Song Hits by Roders& Hart, Imperial Orchestra under Richard Rodgers, Columbia Records, 1939.

HEATHER BURRELL

Steinweiss